Oscar-nominated Juno actress Ellen Page appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night and talked about the difficulty of life in the closet for a gay person. “I feel so grateful to feel how I feel now, compared to how I felt as a closeted person,” she admitted. “It is not a nice place to be. I was sad, it is toxic and I wish that no one had to live that way.” She also acknowledged that she is “a very privileged gay person” and said “those most affected in our community are the most vulnerable.”
The actress was promoting her latest film, Freeheld, where she plays the lesbian partner of Julianne Moore. When asked why she thought that gay marriage had suddenly come through in the USA, she said, “LGBT people started to become more visible. What happens, intolerance is always correlated with less people being out of the closet. And the more people started living their lives, the more we’ve had films, on television…It really changes people’s minds, touches people’s hearts and makes it shift from being something ‘other ‘ or ‘different’ and of course realizes we’re all the same.”
The actress will be presented with the Human Rights Campaign National Vanguard Award this Saturday by Vice President Joe Biden for her courage in coming out and for public statements akin to this one made on Colbert: “What we’re asking for is equality and to grow up in a society that doesn’t make us feel less than, that doesn’t make us feel shame and that doesn’t make us have to deal with the repercussions of that, which are really destructive.”